GOP field looks south

CONCORD, N.H. — Even as most of the Republican presidential hopefuls hustle through town halls and diners ahead of Tuesday’s primary here, a consensus is emerging among the campaigns that South Carolina will serve as the great clarifier.

That’s where it will become clear that either Mitt Romney is on an inexorable path to the nomination or this process will take some time and the Republican Party’s conservative base isn’t quite ready to accept the once-moderate Massachusetts governor.

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New Hampshire still matters. But its 2012 relevance is chiefly in how the results will shape South Carolina on Jan. 21.

In the three-dimensional chess game that is a multi-candidate primary, some measure of success here for Huntsman would give the former Utah governor a rationale for taking his campaign south and targeting the center and center-right voters Romney would otherwise have largely to himself. And if Santorum can, in the second consecutive state, perform better than Gingrich, the former Pennsylvania senator will have a strong case to make in South Carolina that he’s the one the right should rally around to stop Romney.

“If we can be that strong conservative alternative [out of New Hampshire], then that’s the place where we can do well, I think,” Santorum said of South Carolina, adding that he “didn’t have the money to spend in New Hampshire before we got here.”

The possibility of a candidate drawing votes on Romney’s left flank and a more unified opposition on the right would present the GOP front-runner with his most serious challenge yet. Even if it didn’t threaten his long-term prospects, it would at least slow his momentum and presage a longer race.

A third Romney victory — in the heart of the GOP’s Southern base and in a state that has picked the party’s nominee in every primary since 1980 — would almost certainly ensure a coronation in Tampa.

“That’s a strong run, there’s no question about that,” Huntsman acknowledged, discussing the implications of a Romney sweep of the traditional first three states. “Pretty soon somebody builds up a sense of inevitability and in fundraising and organization and all that — it’s just the real world.”

Even as Romney officials seek to tamp down expectations by hewing to talking points about how their candidate won only 15 percent in South Carolina four years ago, some of the front-runner’s most prominent supporters are openly discussing the prospect of the Palmetto State as a TKO.

“He’s going to win in New Hampshire, and it’s going to come down, my friends, as it always does, to South Carolina,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said at a rally near Myrtle Beach last week. “If Mitt Romney wins here, he will be the next president of the United States.”

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, in New Hampshire stumping with Romney, noted that he’s “the front-runner in all the polls in South Carolina.”

“I think he’s doing great [in South Carolina],” Haley said.

The stakes there are equally high for the other candidates: Top backers of Santorum and Gingrich have already discussed how their candidate’s out-polling the other here would set them up for South Carolina.